Review: Confidence by Denise Mina

Title: Confidence {Anna & Fin #2}

Published: 5th July 2022, Mulholland Books

Status: Read August 2022 courtesy Mulholland/Netgalley

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My Thoughts:

I loved Conviction, Denise Mina’s first book to feature Anna McDonald and Fin Cohen so I was excited for the release of Confidence, set around a year after Anna and Fin raced around Europe while podcasting their journey to expose the murderer of an old friend and his children.

When the story opens, Anna, Fin, their respective ex-partners, Hamish and Estelle, Fin’s new girlfriend, Sofia, plus Anna and Hamish’s daughters, and Hamish and Estelle’s new baby, are holidaying together in a Scottish lighthouse. Anna, desperately trying to distract herself from the tense atmosphere, mostly caused by Sofia, is scrolling through messages from listeners to their now successful podcast when a cryptic tweet from a user called WBGrates catches her eye.

Lisa Lee didn’t take it. Please tell them.

Attached to the message are two links, one to a YouTube film of a young woman, Lisa Lee, exploring an abandoned French chateau in an undisclosed location, the other to a page in an auction catalogue displaying a small antique silver casket that is visible in Lee’s footage. Not understanding the connection, Anna searches online and learns the Voyniche Casket is expected to be the subject of a frenzied bidding war among groups that believe it contains proof of Christ’s resurrection, and that Lisa Lee has been reported missing.

Seizing the excuse to abandon the holiday Anna and Fin follow up, and are quickly drawn into the hunt for the missing girl, and the truth about the casket. The pair don’t seem to have a lot of agency in the plot though, their movements are mainly dictated by Bram Van Wyk, a wealthy former smuggler/con man, and his desperate bid to recover the casket. It sort of feels like Mina had an idea for a thriller about smuggling and fanaticism, but didn’t know what to do with it, so she wrote Anna and Fin into it. Unfortunately I think it was a poor fit, and everything suffered as a result. While I easily dismissed plot inconsistencies and absurdities in Conviction, here they were jarring, and the twists had little impact.

The story primarily unfolds from Anna’s first person perspective, alternating with short transcripts from their podcast that serve to fill in some information gaps. While Anna won me over in Conviction, I didn’t find her nearly as compelling or witty here, and Finn may as well have been totally absent.

The pace also suffered with the plot issues and a fair amount of superfluous description. The travel helped somewhat as Anna and Finn fly around Europe courtesy of private jets and helicopters.

I think it’s clear I am disappointed by Confidence, I was feeling a little more generous immediately after finishing it but in retrospect it’s flawed enough that I feel it’s just barely okay, and wouldn’t recommend it.

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